I agree with you all. The problem is obvious, I dont think anybody has any question about it...
On top of tournaments, I think there should be some kind of incentive to play and get out of city. If you think about it, gear items are farmed on instances, divines are farmed on instances, etc. The only thing that you dont farm inside instances are blessed scrolls and element stones, right? Because the olf is farmed with donators/votes/divines, and same for belts, skins and other extra stuff.
The only thing left is epics, TW and sieges, why would people full items bother to go farm or out of city? I go out looking for pvp but there is nobody farming, so there si nobody doing pvp either.
Some items should be available only in exchange of a special coin that is farmed in a specific area or something like that, same for skins and accessories and stuff like that. Otherwise, people dont need to farm/go out of town and get bored.
As @Justme said, PvP zones, Night King, etc. should be a combat area where you flag on spawn and get rewards for killing others.
And finally, I think the server needs to have some advertisement, because let's be honest, there are no new players here. It has been the same people since old viserion and before... And you need some new players from time to time, and even better: new clans, because people get bored, married, have kids, have final tests, or whatever other reason and they stop playing, and if there are no new players, the server is sentenced to die.